This question came to mind due to my wife running in the Chicago marathon earlier today. Hosting a marathon turns out to not be limited to the big cities. My home town of Corpus Christi will be hosting one on December 27th. I thought ours might be the last one of 2026, but it turns out Bellingham, WA, population just under 100K, will host a marathon on New Year’s Eve.
Let’s consider three categories, to avoid the obvious answers. First would be cities in war torn areas or with totalitarian governments. Second is “cities” that are more properly considered suburbs that just happen to have a government separate from the main / central city. Third, and the category I’m most interested in, is those cities that don’t fit into either of the first two categories. Please feel free to answer for any other the three categories, although I think the third is probably the one with the most interesting answer, whatever city it might turn out to be.
FWIW, the Google AI said Karachi, Pakistan was the answer, despite the search engine results later showing that there is in fact a Karachi marathon.
I know San Jose CA does not have one, Population just under 1 million. It does have a half marathon. I think San Jose might be the largest city in the US that does not have a full marathon. Or does a half marathon count?
Every major South African city holds several, so definitely not here, but I feel sure the answer is going to be in the (very populous) part of Africa that does not regularly produce the best marathon runners. Look in West Africa.
I’m guessing it’ll be Kano in Nigeria (where all the front page references to marathons are to some guy doing a Guinness WR sewing marathon ). They held a one-off in 2023 but don’t host a regular one. Estimated population of 4.1 million.
As a contrast, biggest Chinese city without one I could find was Puning, at around 2 million. And Medan, Indonesia doesn’t seem to have one, and it’s 2.5 million.
For sure the difference between “city” and “greater city area” or what I call the “[Whatever city name] metroblob” is going to confound answers. And of course how formally defined that stuff is will vary greatly by country.
e.g. Ref @DrDeth’s example above, despite the awkward geography due to the bay, I’d consider the entire San Francisco Oakland Bay area to be a single “city” for this purpose. That’s my take on the OP’s intent.
But that CSA is composed of two primary subordinate Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and a host of smaller MSAs and micro-MSAs. The two main MSAs are San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont and San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara. Which suggests San Jose should not be considered part of the same area as SF, Oakland, etc.
You know, we were just in Glasgow a couple weeks ago and I remember seeing signs that certain roads would be closed the next weekend for the Great Scottish Run. But it looks like that is only a half marathon and 10K, so you are correct that there is no full marathon.
Let’s say that San Jose qualifies for category 2, as part of a greater city that doesn’t have its own specific marathon. My wife was a first time marathon runner, and she finished the course, which was her goal. Not a top position, but IMHO she did great .
I’m a Texan, not a Californian, but for these sorts of things, I consider, say San Antonio and Austin as one big city (despite the obviously different origins) due to the massive suburban growth between them. San Jose and San Francisco qualify as one big city for the same reasons.
There are marathons held in San Jose, but not a specirifc San Jose Marathon. Many smaller races don’t get the publicitiy of a Boston, NY, or Chicago marathon, but are run partially or completely within the city.
Very true. I used to commute daily between West San Jose and Redwood City, which is about half way to San Francisco, and it sometimes took me an hour each way, depending on the time of the day. Most of Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin, let out at around 4 p.m, and you didn’t want to be on 101 in Sunnyvale around that time. However, when they built 280, that helped. But IMHO, San Jose was never considered a suburb of San Francisco.
). They held a one-off in 2023 but don’t host a regular one. Estimated population of 4.1 million.
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